


What Makes Good Neighbors

by machinewithoutfeelings



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Blow Jobs, M/M, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:31:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5965774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinewithoutfeelings/pseuds/machinewithoutfeelings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux's new neighbor seems to have quite the active social life, and the long nights being kept awake by the (carnal, arousing, infuriating) noises from above have started to affect his everyday life. It has to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes Good Neighbors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xxFeuerFrei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxFeuerFrei/gifts).



> Prompt: Hux just wants one night of sleep. One night that he doesn’t have to listen to the slap of skin on skin, the bed frame thumping against the wall. He takes his matters into his own hands and asks his neighbour to refrain from getting laid for just one night.
> 
> I hope this is satisfactory, what you wanted and I hope you have the loveliest Valentine's Day!!!

 

He totally bombs the meeting with Starkiller.

 

Phasma hovers in the doorway of his office later, holding two cups of tea but looking as if her mind is not made up whether she will go in or not. He knows that she will not fully enter the room until he gives the okay, but Hux doesn't feel like speaking right now, or lifting his face from his hands. He managed to extract one hand from his face to wave her in, while keeping the other firmly planted over the spot in his temple where he feels a massive migraine coming on.

 

Phasma shuts the door behind her.

 

“Sir, I have to ask.” She sets his cup down on his desk, and Hux hooks a pinky around the handle, pulling it toward him. Phasma stayed standing; she sipped her tea while giving him a moment to do the same. “And forgive me if this is out of form, but what the fuck happened in there?”

 

“I have not been sleeping,” Hux says, and he lifts his face up. He knows he looks a wreck. From the bags under his eyes to the way his normally pristine hair must be sticking up in different directions, he is far from the put together VP he normally is.

 

“Do you want me to call your doctor and set up an appointment? Or maybe she can just write a script for something.”

 

“No, no.” Hux takes a sip of his tea and sighs. “It's not a medical issue or anything. It's just...I have this new neighbor. And he's very...loud. At all times of the night. Right above my bedroom. It's impossible to get any rest.”

 

Phasma raises an eyebrow. “What kind of noise is he making every night to the point where he is keeping you awake?” She has a smirk on her face, damn her, this is actually a serious issue. Hux puts his tea down and smoothes down his mussed hair a bit.

 

“He's apparently very popular. He seems to have a different partner up there almost every night.” Hux has never actually seen his neighbor, but he had just happened to be looking through the peephole of his front door once or twice when one of the man's guests happened to be coming down the stairs. A girl with the three weird buns, a big, bearded bear of a man. Hux grimaces in disapproval at the remembrance. “He's loud. His bed bangs all over the floor and the the wall. It's ridiculous. Outside of the sex, he seems like he paces a lot, and I think he is wearing lead boots while he does it.”

 

Phasma's smirk has morphed into supressed laughter, and she coughs to control it when Hux shoots her a displeased look. “Well, sir, maybe you should speak with him. Ask him to refrain from his activities for a night or two a week so you can get some beauty rest. Have you tried complaining to your landlord?”

 

“Of course,” Hux says. “He must be banging that shriveled, gross old man, too, because he just kind of brushed me off.” He sighs. “I shall have a word with him this afternoon. I can't let someone else's nighttime proclivities effect business. Thank you for the tea, Phasma. That will be all for now.”

 

Phasma gives him a nod, and goes to leave out the door, but not before turning back one more time. “Don't fall out the window, sir.”

 

Damn her. She knows him too well.

 

Hux rummages through his drawer until he pulls the pack of cigarettes out from the back. Smoke-free workplace, not today. There is a lighter is there, too, and he takes both of them with him to the window. Hux unlocks it and it swings outward, just enough for him to lean the upper half of his body out. He does not look down. Eight floors up. He looks at the sky as he lights his cigarette. Trying to ignore the bite of cold air against his face, Hux takes the first drag and blows his smoke out into the city.

 

Everything he had told Phasma is true, but there is one detail that Hux purposely left out, and that is fact that all of these nighttime disruptions have begun to leave Hux so unpredictably, uncontrollably _turned on._

 

Eight years ago. That is probably the last time Hux had sex, he thinks. It was after he was out of school, but not very much after. He had been very busy becoming a vice president at First Order by the age of _thir_ _ty-three,_ no minor accomplishment. He hadn't done it by shirking his responsibilities for the frivolity of relationships. Sex is not something he thinks about that often at all- or at least, it wasn't until that man had moved in above him.

 

If only he wasn't so _vocal_. If only he didn't groan so prettily. If only Hux didn't have to hear every shift of the bed above him as someone thrusted into something.

 

Hux would lie in bed, his cock so hard, resisting touching himself until he couldn't stand it anymore. The night before he had come so messily the he had spilled all over his sheets, and he couldn't just leave it like that, so Hux had stood at his washer at two thirty in the morning measuring out Tide. And he didn't like to leave things just sitting wet, so he waited until he could load the sheets into the dryer before he went back to sleep, new set of bedclothes in place.

 

Hux smashes his cigarette out on the exterior of the building, then drops it in his trash. He is going to confront him. If no one else will confront that inconsiderate fornicator in 4-C, it will have to be him.

 

* * *

 

 

Hux raises a fist and raps on the door.

 

There isn't an answer at first, so he does it again, louder, and then the horrible music is lowered to an actually acceptable volume. There are footsteps, those _loud_ footsteps that Hux definitely recognizes. The door opens, and Hux gets his first glimpse of the heavy-footed sex monster that has been disrupting his REM cycles almost every night for the past two months.

 

_Who answers the door shirtless? Put on a shirt; it's unfair._

 

He's taller than Hux by just a little, but somehow lithe-looking and totally built at the same time. He has long black hair tied up in a messy bun, and the only thing he is wearing is a pair of long-slung black sweatpants. At four-fifteen in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Hux tries not to look at his arms as he introduces himself.

 

“I'm your downstairs neighbor,” he says, as the man watches him curiously with big, dark eyes. “I have some issues I would like to discuss with you.”

 

“Issues,” the man repeats slowly, and he pushes the door behind him all the way open so that Hux can pass through. The apartment is the exact same layout as Hux's but it is...a disaster. There is no furniture in living room, just an iPod dock on the floor, a large canvas (painted on abstractly with hideous shades of gray and red) propped against the wall, and a blanket spread out with two pillows sitting on it. And trash. Wrappers, bags, random receipts just littered in random piles on the floor. Bowls and cups and plates just sitting out in corners and on windowsills

 

Hux forces his self not to look at any of it, and instead turns back to his neighbor. “I'm Brendol Hux. I live in 3-C.”

 

“Kylo Ren,” said the man.

 

 _What kind of name is-_ “Kylo,” Hux says. “I'm here to discuss the an issue with you that might be slightly sensitive.”

 

“You're here about my work,” Kylo says, presumptuously, because Hux most certainly is not. “I usually take appointments.” He crosses the room to the kitchen area, and Hux follows him, taking a glance again at the ugly canvas. Admittedly, Hux does not know a lot about art, but he cannot imagine anyone making an appointment to take a look at that. It is the kind of painting one only sees accidentally, like when roped into going to a friend's art opening, or when confronting a neighbor about their incredibly noisy sex.

 

“Are you an artist, then?”

 

“Oh, no. That's just a hobby,” Kylo says. “I'm a medium.”

 

“A _what?_ ” Hux asks, even though he heard him perfectly clearly.

 

The ridiculous man crawls up onto his granite countertop like a housecat, and criss-crosses his legs like a kindergartener at storytime. He reaches into a hanging fruit bowl and pulls out a clementine. “I'm a psychic medium,” he says, peeling back the orange skin and just flinging it into the sink (full of dishes) instead of into the trash can right below him. “People come to me for readings and to contact spirits that have passed on.”

 

Oh, _for Christ's sakes_.

 

“I have seen my a corporeal manifestation of my grandfather's spirit in this very room,” Kylo says, without a trace of a smile. His face is so deadly serious that Hux doesn't even know what to say.

 

“Is that why you have so many people in and out of here?” Hux finally asks, bypassing the subject of how actually insane this man sounds. “Here I thought you were sleeping with them all.”

 

“Oh, I'm fucking them, too,” Kylo says, and he pops a section of the fruit in his mouth. “Not all of them, and not just them, but I like having sex. It focuses my energy.” He sucks clementine juice off of his index finger and his thumb and Hux isn't sure if he is doing it on purpose or not. He only wishes that he didn't flush so easily, though, because he can feel it creeping up his chest. He puts a hand to his neck to make sure that his shirt is still buttoned up all the way, which it is.

 

The nonchalant way Kylo talks about casual sex should be a turn-off to Hux. Honestly, he's always despised it, can't stand the thought of a stranger touching him. It is one of the reasons he hasn't been laid in so long- he had absolutely no time for a relationship and could never bring himself to just hook up.

 

“So do you want me to?”

 

Hux hopes the red hasn't shot immediately up to his face. “Um, excuse me?”

 

“I offered my services,” Kylo says dryly. “Do you have a spirit that you would like to contact? Or maybe you just want a palm reading? I do that, too, it's just not my speciality.”

 

Oh, yes. That.

 

“Absolutely not,” Hux says, an air of disgust prevalent in his voice. “I am not here for any of that. I simply came up here to tell you that you are not the only person in this building and if you would please keep your personal activities to a lower volume, that would be appreciated.”

 

Kylo gives a snort of laughter. “Have you been listening to me?”

 

Hux feels a spike of anger. “I have not had a _choice_ but to listen.” Night after night after night, driving Hux absolutely mad, wondering what the man above him looks like and feels like, and now he looks like _this_ , hard-cut body with an incredibly soft face and big eyes. Hux pushes aside both of these foolish observations as he stands up straighter. “I'm quite sure the entire building can hear you; I'm surprised I'm in the first one to confront you about it.”

 

“You are, though,” Kylo says, and he is still looking at him in that strange way, as if he can see inside his mind. For a moment, Hux has the ridiculous reflex to try and hide his less-than-appropriate thoughts, as if his mind really is laid bare before this man. Kylo unfolds his legs and lets them swing off the side of the counter. They easily reach the floor. “Do you want me to do something to make it up to you, then?”

 

Hux is pretty sure that he is being taunted, but he also is caught off guard by the sensuous quality of Kylo Ren's lips as they perk up on either side. He has a thought flash through his head, incredibly briefly, of bending Kylo over this counter and fucking him past the point of being able to scream, fucking him _quiet_ , and sucking the taste of clementine off his tongue.

 

Instead, he lets Kylo Ren take him to dinner, which is probably a terrible mistake.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hux hates him.

 

The man, no, the _boy_ seems to have no manners or common sense. He pretty much harasses their server with his very exact specifications while ordering, and then with his constant checking in, and then only picks at his food when it finally arrives.

 

Kylo asks him about his work, but then _completely_ tunes out when Hux begins talking. He is looking at Hux, but Hux can tell that's he is not being listened to. Kylo Ren's gaze is awfully intense, and Hux has never felt so ignored while being stared straight at.

 

“So what about you,” Hux says, changing to topic suddenly while stabbing at a cherry tomato. “I can't imagine playing telephone with the great beyond is quite lucrative enough to make rent. Get a little help from the bank of Mum and Dad?”

 

“My so-called _parents_ are not involved,” Kylo says, his tone getting more passionate and aggressive than Hux had heard from him all evening. And he had gotten quite aggressive when he thought a piece of cauliflower was a morsel of chicken. “They do _not_ understand my life and honestly acted like complete assholes when I dropped out of school. We do not speak.” He sniffed. “I have a sponser who really believes in the work I do. I guess it does help subsidize my living a little bit.”

 

Hux really hopes that this sponser is only interested in talking to dead people.

 

Over the course of the rest of their meal, Kylo makes several insulting comments about Hux's job, fusses over the temperature of his Diet Coke and takes multiple bites of Hux's own food without permission. He also turns out to be, Hux hates to admit, kind of funny, in a sarcastic way, and he makes him laugh several times. He also pays without saying anything, and leaves a decent-sized tip, despite his numerous complaints about everything throughout the night.

 

 “You smoke,” Kylo says, later, as they walk home in the cold.

 

Honestly, Hux isn't a pack-a-day smoker or anything; he typically just needs one when he's particularly stressed, but something about Kylo's presence almost heightens the anxiety he is feeling from earlier. “Yes, do you have an issue with that?” Hux says, with no intention to put it out if he does.

 

“I don't understand why anyone would willingly put that kind of poison into their body,” Kylo says. “And addiction is a weakness.”

 

“You don't say,” Hux says, and he fights the urge to blow smoke in Kylo's face.

 

He realizes, standing there at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, that he could have gone home at any point in the night. At any point he could have left Kylo's apartment, or said no to dinner, or faked a business call and gotten the fuck out of that restaurant. He hadn't, though, and looking out the side of his eyes, Hux cannot help but notice the slight redness in Kylo's cheeks brought on by the cold.

 

Hux wants to see him flush ever redder while he makes that pretty moan he's heard through the ceiling, damn it.

 

He's the one who grabs Kylo when they reach the other side of the street, fists his hands into the front of the other's big, dumb black hoodie and pulls their faces together in an almost violent kiss. Kylo, to his credit, responds almost immediately, laying his large hands on the small of Hux's back, moving his lips along with his in an expert way. Hux has admit that he is pretty good at this. He likes Kylo a lot more when he's not talking.

 

“Let's go to my apartment,” Hux says when they make it inside, both because it is one floor lower and because he isn't sure a slob like Kylo Ren will have changed his sheets even after fucking all of those other people. Kylo still has an arm around Hux's waist, and he tugs him close to his body, then backs him against the bannister with the force of lips on lips and chest against chest.

 

“Can't wait?” Kylo asks, smirking against his mouth, and _Jesus_ , Hux thinks, _He's going to be a cocky lover along with all of his other flaws, isn't he?_

 

He grasps into his pocket for his keys anyway. Kylo is sucking hard on his neck as Hux unlocks the door _,_ and as much as Hux wants to tell him to _Stop it, you idiot, are you fourteen, you're going to leave marks,_ he doesn't. Instead he kicks the unlocked door back with his foot and grabs Kylo's face with his hands. He pulls them together again, hard, and Kylo kisses back like a desperate, hungry animal. He nips at Hux's bottom lip, then he licks into his mouth like he is trying to consume him. Hux hears the door slam behind them, but doesn't even bother with the lock.

 

Kylo starts undressing immediately. He undoes his black button-up and tosses it across the room without a thought; Hux's eyes watch it as it slides behind the sofa. Kylo's jeans are kicked off and Hux is left there, fully dressed, staring at this mostly naked, ungainly man staring back at home. Hux's eye flit down and he can see Kylo's cock straining against the fabric of his boxer briefs and just _hell yes_. Hux throws off his jacket (well, he whips it off quickly and folds it across the back of a chair) and begins stumbling over the buttons of his shirt. Kylo takes a step forward and he brushes Hux's hands away, taking off the unbuttoning while also moving his attentions back to the skin under his right ear. Hux feels teeth drag across his neck and he lets out a moan.

 

When Kylo Ren palms a hand over the erection in Hux's pants, he gives up any thought of hating this man tonight.

 

And then Kylo sinks down to his knees, and Hux gives up any thought of actually hating him ever.

 

Kylo's soft, fuckable lips wrap themselves around him, and Hux loses just about all sense of anything, ever. He just looks down at the man knelt before him in disbelief, dropping his head back when Kylo teasingly runs the tip of his tongue along his shaft before taking the whole thing into the back of his throat. Hux briefly thinks of late nights, fisting his cock while alone in his own bed, and he cannot believe how amazing this feels, oh fuck. He grabs Kylo's hair and pulls tight, and Kylo makes a delicious moan while taking him deeper.

 

When he comes, Kylo swallows it all, then yanks down on Hux's arm to pull him down on his own knees. Both men level on the floor, Kylo grabs him by the neck and kisses him thoroughly.

 

The stumble to the bedroom, and, pulling back tightly made sheets, they crawl into the bed where they make out like teenagers. Hux can't remember the last time he wanted to _touch_ someone so much, just trace the wide expanse of his freckled back with his hands while pushing his tongue past bruised lips with a ridiculous frenzy. When Kylo finally pulls back after what feels like ages, his long black hair is down and greatly mussed, and his face is a flushed shade of pink that Hux finds beyond pleasing.

 

“Do you have any lube?”

 

“Lube,” Hux repeats, looking back and forth as if will suddenly appear if he searches hard enough. He stares back down at Kylo, who is casually stroking Hux with one hand, and sucking bruises into his hip. “Fuck,” he says with a groan, both at the sight and at his lack of lubricant. “No, I don't.”

 

“I have some,” Kylo says, and without another word he slips out of bed, opens Hux's window, _climbs out into the cold completely naked_ and disappears up the fire escape. When he reappears a minute later, he has snowflakes in his black hair and a bottle of lube clutched in his hand. He looks triumphant, and the smile on his face does something dangerous to Hux.

 

“There is something wrong with you,” Hux says as Kylo crawls back over his body, grinning and predatory, but his voice has never sounded so fond. Kylo's skin is ice against his, and Hux wants to push him away, but Kylo crushes his lips, still improbably warm, down on his again. Suddenly Hux doesn't even mind the freezing fingers stroking up his side.

 

“You want to fuck me?” Kylo mumbles against Hux's mouth, and the noise that Hux hears leave his own mouth is obscene. Kylo rolls off of him, actually _rolls_ , and moves to where his jeans had been kicked right outside the bedroom door. He reaches into the back pocket and pulls out a couple of condoms.

 

“You just had those in your back pocket the whole time?” Hux asks, picking up the lube where it had been left on the bed and squeezing some into his palm.

 

“Yeah,” Kylo says, walking back in, ripping the wrapper open with his teeth. “I mean, you never know, right?” There is that goddamn cocky grin again, and Hux kisses him again just so he doesn't have to look at it.

 

* * *

 

 The next day is terrible for multiple reasons, the least of all being that it snows quite significantly overnight, and the most of all being that they officially lose the Starkiller account to Resistance Co. There is also the reason Hux most hates admitting to himself- the fact that he wakes up alone in his bed in the morning.

 

He keeps _thinking_ about him. Hux doesn't know why, during what should be one of the worst moments of his career, his mind goes to the way Kylo's eyes had looked as he gazed up at him from the floor, lips around Hux's cock. The grin that had crossed his face as he swallowed and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.

 

This infuriates Hux.

 

It was supposed to have been a release. He is not supposed to be thinking of Kylo Ren the next day; after all, the man was _obnoxious,_ no matter how exhilarating his whimper when being fucked against the headboard. It was a poor idea entirely, Hux knows now, probably brought on by the extreme stress he had been up against the day before. _I'll probably have to move_ , he thinks, and he looks up other apartments all through his lunch break and refuses to entertain the idea that it is because now hearing Kylo fuck other people above him will be twenty times as worse.

 

When he gets home, it is quiet. He spots Kylo's shirt still behind his sofa, but doesn't do anything about it. Instead, not even bothering to take off his coat or gloves, Hux pours himself a glass of wine and makes his way out onto the fire escape. He lights a cigarette as he looks out over the white of the cityscape, and something inside of him feels a weird pang of loss.

 

Not five minutes into quiet contemplation, Hux hears a clang against the metal above him. He looks up.

 

It is Kylo Ren. He is lying belly-down on the grate, like a child, hanging his head over the side of the fire escape. Hux glares at him.

 

“What do you want? Are you wanting to lecture me again about the dangerous toxins that I am willingly sucking into my body?”

 

Kylo tilts his head, and his black hair falls all over his face. “I got you something,” he says through a veil of black. “Come up to my place.” He rolls back over and disappears through his window. Hux sighs, stabbing his cigarette out on the railing, and follows him up.

 

The apartment is just is disgusting as it was the day before, and Hux is rather happy that he is wearing his gloves as he climbs in through the window. Kylo is shuffling through some bags sitting by his front door, and finally pulls up a small plastic bag and holds it out to Hux. Hux looks at it with suspicion for a moment before accepting it.

 

“It's an electronic cigarette,” Kylo says, before Hux even has a chance to get it fully out of the bag. “I was thinking, well. I was thinking it would be slightly better for you that what you were smoking.”

 

“I don't smoke that much,” Hux says, even though he realizes he has smoked at least seven or eight times in the last 24 hours. “You caught me on an atypical day.” Still, the gift touches something strange inside Hux. He realizes that he can't remember the last time someone got him something just because they were _thinking_ of him, not because it was required for an occasion or an attempt at currying favor.

 

“And I've put some thought into your initial complaint from yesterday,” Kylo says, his voice slightly stilted in a completely endearing way. “I think I can be a little more mindful of my noise level. If you want me to.”

 

Hux catches the slight lowering of the voice on the last sentence. Hux is normally such a carefully controlled man, but there is nothing careful about the way he drops the package he is holding and tugs Kylo into a kiss with a leather-clad hand. The other man lets out of a pleased little noise as Hux pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth.

 

He doesn't believe Kylo when he says he can be more mindful of his noise. From his experiences the night before, he really doesn't believe the man capable of it. Even now as they kiss, as Hux backs him against the wall and runs a hand up the inside of his thigh, Kylo can't help the high-pitched sounds that spill from his mouth. No, Hux thinks, the only reliable way to keep him from making so much noise above is to keep Kylo below him instead.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at [machinewithoutfeelings](http://www.http://machinewithoutfeelings.tumblr.com/)


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